Awakening
by silvereyedbitch
Summary: Damien Vryce discovers the things in Gerald Tarrant's past that created the Hunter, beginning from his time as a mortal. Also, he discovers newfound feelings previously hidden away. Warning: M/M, Emotional angst, torture, rape, incestual rape, etc. Very dark stuff here. Not for kids.


Disclaimer: Not even close to being a real author, this is in fact my first creation, so please pity me here. These characters are taken lovingly from the Coldfire trilogy created by C.S. Friedman and used for my own purposes to delve deeper into the past of one of them.

Summary: Damien discovers how the Hunter came to be, and realizes new feelings deeply hidden.

A/N: Careful, this contains some pretty horrid stuff. Emotional angst, torture, rape, incestual rape, etc. A touch of fluff at the end, though, just to raise the spirits!

Setting/Timing: The cavern in which Tarrant and Damien rest after the big confrontation with Calesta. The mother of the Iezu has blessed Tarrant with a new chance at life, and he has kept his adeptitude, but he still must feed in his strange manner because that is the only thing that the Iezu mother can conceive of since her children all feed off of similar things (human emotions). Their bond having been broken when Gerald "died," he must renew it with Damien in order to make it out of the lava filled land, for without it he will surely starve with how spent he already is. He offered his blood in the same manner, and Damien took it, dependable as always!

The excerpts from Coldfire Trilogy Book One: Black Sun Rising that inspired this little enterprise:

"What can you know of the mindset of the weak, whose lives are centered around vulnerability? When you hear footsteps behind you in a darkened street, do you fear being kidnapped? Raped? Overcome by the sheer physical strength of your attackers? Or do you feel confident that with firm ground and a reliable weapon in your hands you could hold your own against any reasonable threat? How can you possibly understand what it means to lack that confidence-or what it can drive a human to do, to try to gain it?...I think I understand it very well."

Awakening

After Damien's blood seemed to have returned to a more human temperature, the icy fire of the Hunter's blood spreading throughout him having dissipated, he slumped to the ground. They both definitely needed more rest before continuing on, ragged as they were. Looking across the darkness at the silent and still form of the Hunter now reclined against an angle of the cave wall, Damien marveled at the events that had led up to this point in their twisted relationship, his mind drifting just above the level of unconsciousness. Introspection resulted in a blaze of self-criticism. What a blind fool he had been in the beginning! Stubborn pride refusing to accept anything outside of church orders and mandates. He had thought himself open-minded then, but he realized now that he was naïve in the extreme in the ways of good and evil. So many shades of gray! It was a wonder he hadn't gotten himself killed with that blind adherence to church doctrine! And though he still experienced guilt from the friendship he felt Tarrant and he had established, it was nothing near the self-righteous loathing his old self would have put forth.

Was Tarrant asleep? He concentrated, pulling his thoughts toward the newly forged connection between them. It seemed he could feel the slight relaxing of tension across the blood bond that indicated a restful slumber. Damien's thoughts wandered for a few minutes more before his eyes began to close of their own accord. But, just at the cusp of dreams came a slight jolt of fear. _What the vulk was that? _His eyes wide open now, he scanned the cave from his ground view. Nothing different from a moment before. Absolute silence reigned in the cavern. Dim illumination from the lava field filtering through to their temporary lair created a soft pink-red light, barely enough to discern much from a few feet away. Figuring his nerves were just on edge from the confrontation and subsequent exhaustion, he closed his eyes again and began to seek sleep once more.

Once again, just as he is about to leave the waking realm, he felt the same jolt of terror, only this time it does not relent. He sits bolt upright. It feels as though something is tugging at him in the center of his chest. Like his very soul is being pulled towards the ground. _Cold, so cold,_ he has only that brief moment of thought before his body collapses back to the floor, and he enters a dream world that he does not belong in…

He "awakens" in a strange field, empty of most everything but a carpet of grass that seems as if the chlorophyll has been all but leached out of it. Everything seems washed out, colorless, dead. The sky is not blue, but only another shade of the same dismal gray. Looking around himself, there appears to be no way to determine direction. There is no heavenly body or stars to give light, just a gloomy half-light permeating this world that would barely be sufficient for navigating by. Strangest of all, the horizons seem not to stop and drop off at the edge of the sky, but appear to continue on forever, rising up and inverting until touching the opposing directional horizon. Circular, it feels, like an immense sphere. Yet, feeling a growing need to be moving, he picks a direction and begins walking, noticing as he goes that the grass does not flatten when he treads upon it. In fact, it seems that his feet pass _through_ it. He pauses for a second to explore this, and after unsuccessfully trying to pluck some of it, he confirms his insubstantial state. This is different from his usual dreaming tendencies, he ponders, as he feels more _aware_ that he is, in fact, dreaming. But he continues on anyway, thinking this an awfully strange but ultimately dull dream.

After what could have been minutes or hours, Damien comes to a tree. To say this tree was large was as if you were to say the galaxy is kind of big. Total understatement. Perhaps 30 men might go hand in hand to wrap all the way around the massive trunk. Damien reaches out and finds he can touch this rough bark and is awed at how small he feels in comparison. He traces his hand along it as he circles to the other side, where he finds a stream as leached of color as everything else. In front of the tree and before the stream sits a young boy of perhaps 6 or 7. Oddly, the child is the only thing possessed of color in this world, though his pale skin is barely tinted with more color than the landscape surrounding him. It takes little examination to determine that the golden haired youth with gray eyes and such porcelain skin belongs to a young Gerald Tarrant. He is playing with wooden figurines at the edge of the river bed, totally absorbed in his make-believe as children can easily become. Momentarily, while handling one figurine, another floats off the ground and towards the child. When he realizes what he has done, he quickly glances around after dropping it in midflight. He seems afraid of witnesses to his power. _How interesting_, thinks Damien. But then, of course anyone would have repressed their adept power back then. It was not as well tolerated in those times almost nine centuries ago. _What an odd thing to dream up_, crosses Damien's mind.

Suddenly, the boy looks up, a frightened cast to his face. He glances around in all directions, looking completely through Damien as he does. And all at once, other boys enter the scene, seemingly from nowhere, which only serves to escalate the apparent terror frozen on the young Tarrant's face. Of the new arrivals, evil intent is written across all of their countenances, easily observed. There are perhaps 8 or 9 of them of varying ages. The oldest could possibly pass for as old as 20. Similarities in all of their features reveal their kinship to Gerald, and they surround him, forcing him to keep his back to the stream. The small boy looks to one of the younger of his assailants, "You promised! You said this place was safe!" The other boy looks at Gerald with no trace of pity and says with a venom laden voice, "And you believed me…again!" The boys all laugh as he says this and begin closing in. Of them all, Gerald seems to be the only brother in whom the robustness of the gene pool has skimmed over. He looks so small and frail facing his brothers with the streambed at his back. His tiny frame trembles at the anticipated violence.

Sensing the dread building in this moment, Damien begins to move forward, but is stopped when he comes about ten feet from where the scene is playing out. It is as though some kind of barrier forced him back when he tried to cross any closer. He attempts yelling, which has just as little effect. And so he watches with growing horror as the fair haired, scrawny youth is beaten, held under water until just reaching unconsciousness, and raped repeatedly by those who, with their familial relation, should have been guiding and protecting their youngest sibling from these very things. It seemed there was no end to their creative cruelty as they continued the assault for well over an hour, covering the river stones with the boy's innocent blood. This brilliant red of his life's essence stands in stark contrast to the deathly gray of this world.

Once finished with their malicious game, they take young Gerald's clothing with them, leaving him naked, bruised, and bleeding. Lying half in the water, his life's blood creating red streamers carried away by the current, the boy shivers and cries, saying over and over, "You promised, you promised." Damien weeps with him. To see such horrific acts committed to the innocent and to be powerless to do anything is one of the worst imaginable occurrences for him. And Damien had felt _EVERY_ emotion that had played within that boy's mind and body. He felt them _with_ him, _as they occurred_. An effect of their bond no doubt, but it leaves him as mentally scarred as the boy in the water ahead of him. Looking across to that poor, huddled form, he reaches out as if he can somehow help with that simple gesture. And then darkness falls over everything. He can no longer hear the sobbing of the young Gerald. He can't even hear his own breathing. And then the images begin to play in his vision, soundless for the most part, but terrible in that silence.

Scenes passed before Damien's eyes of repeated scenarios like the one just witnessed. They play over and over throughout Gerald's early childhood and into his teenage years until all of his brothers had finally left home to seek their own futures. The abuse did not come solely from them, however. Images of a hateful father hang suspended for Damien's viewing. Unhappy with the feminine looks of his youngest son, Gerald's father constantly punishes him with criticism. He knows of Gerald's "curse," too; the adeptitude bestowed on him since birth. Any time Gerald slips and shows even the tiniest hint of this, he is immediately, and severely, punished. And so he hides his talent for manipulating the fae and never practices with it, not even to save himself from pain, because if his father knew about its use, then the pain would be doubled in his punishment.

In his mother there was no solace to be found either. She saw herself in Gerald's face and so was forced to witness daily the vitality and youth she had lost. Being a vain woman, she couldn't tolerate this, and so she uses any opportunity to slap or cuff him in order to mar his (_her_) beauty. There is no one to run to. No one to confide in. No one who cares for this lost soul at all.

And companions, well, there were none evident in this course of dreams. As children are wont to do, they react like pack animals. In seeing how Gerald is treated by his family, the town's other children react in a similar fashion. They befriend him, lure him out, and then descend upon him with mockery, fists, or forced sexual encounters. Truly, the word "lonely" could never come close to the crushing emptiness that takes root in that fragile soul during these early years. The need for someone, anyone, to trust, love, or even just not touch him in a violent manner would mean so much. But it is not to be. His brothers see to that.

A scene halts in front of Damien. Gerald has met another youth a year older than himself on the outskirts of his town. She is on her way back from visiting an older sister in the nearest town. Shy, and reluctant to even speak, Gerald can barely converse with her to ask her name. Melodia. She sits by him on the hill right outside of their hometown wondering what to think of this quiet boy beside her. Cornflower hair and jade green eyes, she is a welcome reprieve from the violent encounters Gerald is used to. She senses a need for friendship in him that is almost overpowering in its desperation. She knows the others their age have been unkind to him, but she has little to no contact with them anyway. Her father had died 3 years prior of a strange sickness that passed through the land, and so she had begun to take on more work with her mother to make ends meet. Therefore, she has nothing to lose by befriending him… Forward rushes the vision, just two weeks later. Gerald, beaten bloody and naked, is pushed by one of his brothers onto Melodia's stripped and ravaged dead body. "Why don't you fuck your little whore now?" laughs one of them as darkness descends again, and Damien is glad for it. He weeps in happiness for its return. These scenes have shaken him to his core for he has finally realized that these aren't simple dreams or nightmares made up by his overtired body; his newly strengthened bond with the Hunter has allowed the actual memories of this dark man to trickle down its channel. He is witnessing the creation of a monster.

Horror suffused his mind anew. _These are real! They really happened!_ And there, in that all-consuming darkness of the dream, Damien wept for the Hunter. No, not the Hunter; the man, Gerald Tarrant, who had experienced some of the worst their world had to offer and was transformed into something entirely contradictory to that which could have been. _Such suffering!_ It was an amazing feat in itself that the boy made it through those years at all. The kind of betrayal and combined psycho-physiological abuse this man had endured was unfathomable. And these were but mere glimpses and flashes of past occurrences. Who knew what other cruelty had been visited upon him in the interim before his dark descent into his current state?

The area immediately surrounding Damien began to lighten a bit. Sickened, he realized the show was to begin anew. Gerald, 14 years old, standing in front of his father who was sending him to study the "manly" arts of knighthood in the church. "Perhaps you can prove your worth in this endeavor. God knows, you've not succeeded in anything else as of yet," sneered his father. Gerald was to attend these courses in another town approximately 30 miles west of his current family dwelling. A large old monastery given over to the training of the church's knighthood was to be his temporary home. Hope swelled hot inside him that if he could get away from this place, then perhaps he could remake himself and change his image of being helplessly hopeless and constantly terrorized. He could learn to be a knight! Become strong and fast! Respected even! Seeing a possible end to his state of suffering, Gerald looked forward anxiously to his departure date…

Flash forward in time. Images assault Damien in quick succession until reaching a telling conclusion that is eerily familiar. An image of Gerald entering a large monastery surrounded by woodlands. Flash! A fleeting image of Gerald sitting in the small room assigned to him awaiting the beginning of the first day of training. Flash! And the images slow to one in particular. His meeting with the knight who is to be his teacher and mentor, a tall and burly man with a gruff seeming attitude. A short assessment of his skills at weaponry, agility, and endurance reveals his lack of genetically inherited strength. A pale, lanky, and scrawny teenager sits on an overturned bucket, thoroughly disillusioned with himself because of his pitiful performance. The mentor knight approaches him, saying, "We're not through yet. You still have one more physical skill assessment to complete this day. Evasion." The look in the knight's eyes was unreadable. The steady gaze bored into the young Gerald and began to make him uncomfortable. Feeling utterly spent already, he asked what the next test required. "Why, we are going to assess your tactical evasion skills. And we can't do that here. The best terrain for this exercise lies just outside the monastery," the knight replied, voice steady and devoid of emotion. "The forest?" asked Gerald. "Yes, so get going. You've got 10 minutes to get your bearings and develop a plan before I head in after you," informed the knight, "The clock starts…now."

Gerald trotted out of the main gate and entered the fringe of the forest within minutes, desperate not to fail tremendously in this last test_. Not too thick here, so not good for cover_, he thought as he headed deeper into the greenery. _Perhaps if I just head straight, I will be able to keep ahead of him._ Otherwise, he would have to hide, and that meant possibly being found if he wasn't good enough at concealing himself. Reviewing this day's performance, he decided not to try any more unfamiliar skills. He wondered how long he was supposed to participate in this test. After 10 minutes of alternating walking and jogging, Gerald's reserve was spent, and he just walked. He was far too tired to do any more than that. _Just keep going_, he thought. Glancing at the sky, he noted it was almost twilight. _More difficult for him to see me at least. _Then, as he walked head first into a branch, he thought, _More difficult for me to see, too_.

Night falls, and still he walks. _I should probably turn around now, the test has to be considered over, right? _Turning around, he heads back in the general direction of the monastery. Very soon, however, he realizes that he has seen a certain rock formation on the forest floor before, and it wasn't very far in to the woods where he had seen it_. I've circled around!_ he thought, panicking. But no one had caught him yet, so he might have just been lucky enough to circle in the opposite direction of the knight. He continued on. By his estimation, he should be about a 15 minute jog from the main gate. His spirits lifted. _At least I did well in this _one_ test!_

Then, he tripped, falling face first onto the forest's leaf covered grassy carpet_. Great. Some knight I am, _he thought to himself.He then realized that what he had tripped over was man made. A wire! Looking fearfully all around, his fright filled mind couldn't make out any telling details in the dark. He lay there on his stomach for another few seconds just listening. Nothing. He began to push himself up off of the half-decayed leaves and received a kick in his left side for his troubles. "Found you," the knight whispered into Gerald's ear while crouching over him. Still half blinded by pain, Gerald felt disappointment well inside himself, but it turned to fear as he felt his hands being bound. "What are you doing?!" he cried out. No answer from the older man. He repeated himself over and over with the same result of cold silence.

He was dragged over to a strange series of short posts sticking up out of the forest floor. The knight stopped dragging him, made sure he was rolled all the way onto his belly, and then secured his wrists to the one of the short, grounded posts. Each leg was given its own post which left them spread perhaps two feet apart. Pleas going unanswered, Gerald remained silent for a while. Perhaps being left overnight in the forest was punishment for such poor performances as his? That's what it had to be! It was not unheard of for young knights in training to have strange punishments, such as standing at attention for hours on end, not allowed to speak. The silent treatment must be related to this, too. His mind calmed somewhat when he came to these conclusions, and his breathing steadied.

To his consternation, the knight then cut his shirt off. Pale skin that appeared luminescent in the moonlight was exposed to the night chill. _So I'm to freeze in punishment, too?_ he thought. But then rough hands grabbed the waist of his trousers, cut the belt, and yanked them down. _NO!_ he thought, and he heard himself screaming, pleading. But all went unanswered as his knight _mentor_ began to violate his body for hours. After the first few minutes, Gerald's screams and pleas ceased. He stopped struggling and lay as a dead thing. No help was coming. No one ever came. Because no one cared. Ever. The tears dried on his face as he was rhythmically pushed face first into the dirt over and over.

Near what was probably midnight, the man finally ceased his physical assaults. "You're lucky," he whispered to Gerald, "I've had some suffocate like this. Unfortunate in the extreme." Gerald could barely process the words, so beaten and battered was his physical state, ebbing in and out of conscious thought. "You're broken in now, so don't fight it next time, and I won't have to tie you, pretty boy," the man said as he began cutting the ropes that bound Gerald. After the knight left, Gerald lay curled up on the ground sobbing. He felt so dirty, so unclean! He ran his hands up and down his thin arms as if trying to slough off the night's tragedy. And the world fades from Damien's vision…

The next series of images flit by showing how Gerald, after six months of enduring much of the same abuse, succeeded in transferring to a different monastery, also managing to fool the high priest there into thinking he was supposed to be doing scholarly studies instead of the arduous physical learning of the knighthood. And there his mind flourished, acquiring knowledge by the day, by the hour. Allowed private study due to his advanced style of learning, he practically never saw his instructors, or anyone else for that matter. Which suited his solitary, lonely soul just fine. Damien noted that Gerald began to bathe more than once every day around this time, scrubbing at times until he bled. He began to experiment with his talent for the fae as well and had hundreds of books covering that topic smuggled in to his waiting hands. He discovered the church's errors there as well, and he began to see a way through to correcting them. But it would be years before he made his research known. He had attended private lessons at home, of course, but he always had to be on guard there, where his brothers were forever seeking weaknesses in him, not to mention that some of the beatings he suffered would leave him unable to see through an eye at times. Nothing was ever said by his tutors, however, because they had seen how the dynamics of the Tarrant family worked. This had made for a poor learning environment indeed. Now, however, he was able to discover his true calling. That of science and logic. And intertwined in those two was the fae, always the fae.

Four years flew past Damien in a flurry. Scenes of Gerald, always alone, but ever seeking knowledge. His skill as an adept growing immensely, to the point in fact, that even the advanced literature on the subject was no longer of any use to him. He had gone beyond what those paltry pages had to offer and now created his own lessons and recorded his own notes of the subject. Though his existence was desolate of human contact, he grew in every other way possible. Then the letter came.

His father and mother had died in a carriage accident while traveling, and his presence was requested at home. Fear, hatred, and an amalgam of other emotions rushed through him. He would have to return. His father's monthly stipend to continue his education here would no longer be coming. Perhaps when his eldest brother took up as head of the family, he would allow for Gerald to continue here. He hadn't seen the man in years now, and maybe the evil tendencies had abated since he was now married and had children of his own. Surely this will have smoothed over the violent tendencies his brother had been prone to in his youth. But Gerald feared that deep down, people remained the same; suppressed perhaps, but the same nonetheless.

More years pass by Damien. Gerald's arrival home. The funeral. The dark reception his eldest brother had for him. Of course Gerald could continue his education, but he must do it from Merentha Castle under his brother's watchful eye. Scenes of being made to come to his brother's bed several times per week when the Lady of the house wasn't fulfilling his baser urges to his full satisfaction. Being kept practically a prisoner in the east wing of the castle, never allowed to go anywhere else without express permission. The punishments for trespassing against the Neocount were many and made of the stuff of nightmares. The punishments over the years flickered by Damien. Beatings given with all manner of instruments, from whips, to rocks, to hammers. Deprivations of water, food, and other necessities. And rape, always rape, whether by his brother's body or by many of the same instruments used in his physical punishments.

One instance in particular stayed in view for longer than the others. A scene of Gerald kneeling in some sort of containment unit, the floor of which was covered in rice, blindfolded, gagged, naked. It appeared to Damien that Gerald was squeezed into a sort of box that had short, exquisitely sharpened spines on all sides. The dimensions of the box would not allow for standing, nor leaning to one or the other side, or forward and back. Barely two inches of space between himself and the spines on any one side. He was left there for three days. Each time he would begin to doze, he would slowly drift in one direction or another and become a literal pincushion, blood leaking from the hundred tiny holes left in his pale, fragile body. Three days of kneeling on rice and his own excrement, falling asleep and getting impaled by miniature spears, and deprived of even water. He collapsed unconscious when the sides of his containment box were pulled away from him on the end of the third night, hundreds of tiny punctures in various stages of healing dotted his poor, still form. As Damien watched in heartfelt and helpless rage, a booted foot prods the defeated Gerald's head. When no response is forthcoming, the boot draws back and kicks into the tender part of his side where his left kidney is located. With a sudden groan and a retch, Gerald's eyes fly open, glazed but awake. Every breath drawn in reveals the pattern of ribs easily visible along his starved frame. Months of previous deprivations of food have left their mark. Too weak to even curl up in defense, he lay at the feet of his brother who leans down and grabs hold of the long, golden hair, "You haven't pleased me yet this night, you filth! Wake up and earn your keep!" he screams as he begins dragging the barely conscious form of Gerald towards another room his brother often uses for his sexual penance.

As the scene expires, Damien can just barely make out the wails as the sound of something repeatedly striking flesh begins to ring out. Darkness, blessed darkness again. Damien is so overcome by horror at this point that he feels his sanity slipping. _How could anyone endure this?_ He sobs for what seems like an hour before, finally, running out of tears. He is left with an ache in the middle of his chest that feels as though he will be brought to the ground from it if he does not consciously concentrate on keeping himself standing. Then the telltale lightening of the area indicates that a new reel of memories is bearing down on the heartsick former priest.

Gerald begins studying a much darker form of the fae. Scenes flit by of a blackening soul, lost and alone in the world. The scenes culminate with the death of the offending Neocount brother, under slightly suspicious circumstances. An inheritance letter bestowing all lands and titles to Gerald is "miraculously" uncovered. The old Neocount's wife and children are sent away. All of the old servants are released from service. New ones take their place. People who don't ask questions. When any of his brothers try to contact him or show the slightest hint that they might challenge him for the title, he sends, through the fae, a working to relieve their minds of such desires. He needs time to plan before he sees them again. Time flies by Damien's eyes. He watches as the new Neocount of Merentha creates a working that he sends out into the night, questing for a perfect match, his perfect wife to uphold looks and tradition for the townsfolk. When one is located by the spell, she will be compelled to the area so that she can unwittingly meet the Neocount. From there, the enchantment will foster a deep and abiding love and infatuation by fanning the flames of natural human desire. Gerald, with his angelic features, will have no trouble instilling the first hints of interest in his prey. From there, she will be his eternally. He doesn't trust in humanity anymore, and so he relies on the fae to provide his mate for him.

And it works. It works well. Almea is everything a perfect wife should be. Beautiful, faithful, dutiful, and most of all she is not inquiring as to his "scientific" practices, especially since he also creates such beautiful works for the church theocracy to contemplate and incorporate into doctrine. He is the leading mind of his generation in this venue, but his soul has already been touched by the darkness, and it spreads insidiously through him, year by year. Because of his contributions to the church, he is inducted as a knight in the church's most sacred of orders, the Knights of the Flame. Damien watches as he leads crusades against the darkness for them, gleaming and heroic in his golden armor. The perfect knight, shining forth as a light to quell the blackest of creations this world has to offer. It lifts Damien's heart to see the man as he should have been. Tarrant's faith in his church radiates outward from him in the scenes as he rides to battle again and again. He fights at the right hand of King Gannon himself, steeped in honor and righteous valor. The progress made then against the dark fae is legendary.

But even this is not enough to quench his desire for more knowledge, more learning, more freedom from the fae in this world for humanity. And his desire for this is so great that it begins to change him. Darkness had already seeded his soul prior to this, but this is something different, something more tangible. In his mind, he sees what he is becoming as an act of God in itself. In order to lead the church and ensure its survival into the future, he must be there with it, always. The very world of humanity depends on this creation of his surviving, does it not? But as he searches for the solution to this, he is informed of unwelcome news following a series of strange bouts of weakness that lead him to seek medical examination. He has a genetically derived defect in a crucial location of his heart. He has but scant months remaining to him…and this angers him as nothing else. How dare his ceaselessly frail mortal body try to come between him and his creation, his future?! He must stop it! He must be there…forever.

And he finds his path is a dark one indeed. The images from that night of his transformation rocket out into the view of the former priest. They slam him back with their evil and their wickedness. Betrayal is signed in blood, an oath given freely to powers that reach beyond mortal comprehension in their evil is sealed with a sacrifice of immense proportion, and then following this is a long descent into an all-encompassing compact that has no way out. From that night of sacrifice, the visions roll on to depict his brothers' demise. Each brother's death is gruesome and horrible in its finality and serves to only further confirm the evil that now subsumes the soul of this man, this monster.

Damien then witnesses the almost mindless abandon of Tarrant's first years as an undead being. All violence and blood. And then the slow adaptation that evolves into a more subtle kind of feeding. This suits Tarrant's intelligent mind much more thoroughly than outright violence. The careful selection of prey and the psychological thrill of fashioning their worst nightmares and fears unto the abandonment of all hope becomes his fare. His eventual arrival to the Forest, and his mastering of it follow these visions. The raising of the new Merentha Castle amidst the dark and terrible wildlife spawned by the fae. These scenes play in front of Damien as a black and white parody of life. And then they fade from view.

Damien is allowed space for thought once more, and space to breathe. The oppressiveness of those memories has played on his emotions as if they were harp strings. Sorrow, revulsion, horror, depression, anger, and more have run rampant through his soul, leaving it in tattered particles that scatter with the slightest of thoughts. He feels exhausted, though he hasn't moved a bit since the memories began. _Lord, please, I can't take much more of this!_ His breath catches as he realizes a scene has started in front of him again, this time with no warning at all. It is from the time when he first met the Hunter. He watches their first interactions with a different viewpoint indeed. How snobbish he sounds to himself, especially now that he has seen a part of what had created this twisted undead being. They travel together, and Damien witnesses himself changing, ever slowly, but changing nonetheless in his behavior toward the Hunter. He sees the acceptance growing, the reliance on one another. But what he focuses in on with the intensity of a hawk sighting its prey is not his own changing actions and mannerisms. He noted those, true, but they pale in comparison to what he sees taking place right in front of him. With his early attitude, he would never have been able to recognize it. But now, with his newer viewpoint, his position as an outsider looking in, and most tellingly of all, his ability to experience emotions _with_ Tarrant as they occur during the scenes playing, he realizes what was in front of him the whole time.

He watches as Gerald touches his face in the Rakhlands that long ago day in order to telepathically communicate through their initial bond so that their captors couldn't overhear. To Damien then, it was just another of the horrid side effects of his self-inflicted bond with an undead nightmare. But to Tarrant…it was something else. Was that?...No. It couldn't possibly be. But as the scenery plays on, and he witnesses time after time when he came close to the Hunter, helped him, spoke with him…Tarrant felt a burning, a desire, a fire that breaks the ice of his magic into splinters. So proud, so arrogant…so alone. His desire for Damien to touch him, just for the sheer pleasure of physical contact is overwhelming. Damien is floored by it_. How could this be?! I had no idea, no clue, no anything,_ he thought. Then, _I'm such an idiot_. The instances are so many and so overpowering, Damien has to fight to stay cognizant of them all. Then they slow somewhat…and stop on another scene.

He feels the initial revulsion Tarrant experienced when he himself realized what was occurring. The inborn fear that everyone you love or trust will always betray you, and he saw Damien as no different, whether or not he had insinuated his way into the Hunter's affections. He witnesses the frenzy with which Tarrant loses himself in during hunts along their travel, attempting to overwhelm the growing feelings with the sheer evil of wanton murder. But it wasn't enough. Everything he did only left him to feel the pull stronger still. Things he would say to Damien just to inflame him and possibly rid himself of the problem always backfired. Damien stuck with him…no matter what. And wasn't that what trust relied on? True steadfastness despite the odds?

Slowly, over their travels, Tarrant begins to accept this feeling, the burning inside himself. Never to be expressed! _Never_! Then the pain from his earliest years would become a reality again, and what would become of the Hunter? Better to acknowledge a weakness and then find a way around it later. Yes, that was how he reconciled it with himself, but Damien saw that Tarrant only fooled himself. And the moment it cemented for Tarrant was when Damien rescued him from the Corelight in the crystalline castle of the Undying Prince. When he awoke to find Damien there, after all of the beguiling and trickery and cruelty…it formed in the middle of his gut, that feeling of knowing what you want and simultaneously knowing you can never have it. Expressing love would surely be the end of him, and he had already pushed the bounds of his contract several times in order to accommodate Damien. And so he suffers his feelings silently, always wanting and never being able to do anything for it.

His worst awakening moment was after he realizes Damien has brought him back from Hell itself. _Is there no end to this man's surprises and dedication?!_ Tarrant's words float through Damien's mind. And the former priest then witnesses the breaking of the Hunter's will. Nothing shows outwardly, the calm and collected facade only appears sickly due to its recent trials and nothing else. But inside, Damien can _feel_ those windows of this blackest of souls break open with a desperation that astounds him. Full acceptance of this feeling…this LOVE. And with that word coming through the Hunter's mind, finally giving a name to what has tormented him these months, Damien feels the full on effect he has on this man, this broken and utterly _human_ feeling man.

The blood bond wasn't even necessary, Damien saw. Gerald would have actually been fine facing Calesta without it. But it was a final test of the adept's for the former knight. He could never voice his feelings aloud to see if they were returned, but in offering a part of himself, a part of his soul, and having it accepted by the man he loved, he had received the closest thing to it that was possible under the circumstances. He knew that Damien trusted him, implicitly. And that gave him a strength to face Calesta that no mere dish of fearful nightmares could ever compare with. Unrequited love, but it gave him the only true happiness he had felt in centuries.

With a start, Damien's eyes were open and staring at the cavern ceiling. The crick in his neck was a terrible thing, but so was the realization of everything he had just been witness to. What to do?! It was so much to process at once. Feelings warred within him_. A man?_ Damien was no stranger to the idea that men paired together, but for himself he had just never considered the possibility. Gazing across the way at the long, still form of Gerald Tarrant something began to stir in him. _Look at all the things he did for me. Consider it! He risked so much by toeing the line of his contract over and over. And for what? Nothing more than to please me, _Damien thought. As he pondered this development, he found that he wasn't averse to it at all. In fact, he might even have been suppressing feelings, too, all this time. _To hell with it, anything's worth a try, and this man and I have been through everything together._ If that's not a perfect test of a relationship then he didn't know what _could_ be. Ruefully he thought, _The mechanics aren't the same, but I suppose we could work around that eventually._

His gaze hadn't wavered from Tarrant's form at all during his internal monologue, and began to pick up on subtle twitches in the man's muscles, as if he were dreaming again. Realizing what kind of dreams this man apparently had, he figured they couldn't be anything good. He slowly, quietly stood up and padded over to the sleeping form. He sat down with his back to the wall up near Tarrant's head. Looking down through the shadows at the other man's beautiful and familiar face, he thought, _Yeah, I could get used to this idea._

He reached down to brush away a large lock of long, golden hair that fallen across Tarrant's eyes and pulled his hand back in horror as he felt the wetness on the man's face. _Blood!_ was his first thought. He ran to the tiny lantern, turned up the light, and returned to the other man's side swiftly to assess the damage. The first thing he noticed, with relief, was the absence of blood. Secondly, he located the source of the wetness as being tears running down Gerald's face to drip off his nose onto the floor. Damien's heart flew up in his throat at the sight. He could see by the light of the lantern now that Gerald was in the middle of his personal nightmares again, and he could feel the echoes of terror and pain that accompanied them.

Setting the lantern down and turning it back off, he lay down beside the man, with his back on a steep rising in the floor. He pulled a pack over for a pillow and placed it behind him. Then, carefully, as if the other man were made of glass, he gently tugged Gerald's head and torso across his chest and wrapped his arms around him. The contact seemed to help, and so he began running his hand along one of Gerald's arms as if to say, _I'm here, don't worry._ This actually didn't feel as strange as he had feared. The Hunter's tall, lean and graceful form easily draped over Damien's accommodating bulk. No wonder the Hunter had always wanted privacy when he slept if he always ended up dreaming like that! How awful! And so he held this much maligned being while his dreams calmed and soon drifted off himself.

After a while, Gerald began to stir in Damien's arms. When his eyes crept open, he couldn't get a feel for his position on the cave floor. Damn, how vulnerable he felt, how weak. It was going to be a while before they reached civilization, and therein, sustenance. This journey home was to be as difficult as the initial arrival. He did not relish the idea of himself being utterly vulnerable for so long a period, but it was unavoidable. He could only feed on so much emotion from Damien without draining the man entirely. With a ghost of a smile, he thought, _And isn't that a change? No longer do I seek to destroy you Vryce_. He looked up into the darkness and saw Damien's form slightly above him, breathing slowly in slumber. That seemed a strange positioning, but his sleep fogged mind couldn't process it properly. The reality of the moment hit him square on when Tarrant moved an arm only to feel Damien's limp hand slide slowly down it and off as he was moving. The emotional explosion reverberating from Tarrant was enough to bring Damien to full wakefulness instantly. Tarrant began to struggle weakly to get away from him. Damien, however, reached around Tarrant's chest and held him firm, a telling testament to the Hunter's weakened state.

"It's alright Gerald. I _**know**_." And with that last word, Gerald felt the emotions through their bond and _saw_ what had happened as he slept. Indignation and anger were the first reactions, but they quickly gave way to a gnawing fear that crawled through his belly and out of his throat. Heart hammering in his chest, he could barely breathe and remained deathly still. His secret revealed! And now he would have to face the rejection, the hatred, the pain. But most of all, he feared the loneliness that followed those things. Pitifully, and in a voice barely above a whisper, Tarrant said, "I am so very sorry Vryce. I never meant for you to know. I never wanted to place that burden upon your soul, and so I kept it deep inside. I promise you I had no idea that the result of the blood-bonding would affect us so strongly, otherwise I would have never subjected you to it. Suffering is the last thing I would ever wish upon you. I ask only that before you leave, please tell me you understand that I never meant it to be this way for you. I ached every time you were hurt, and I could do nothing without either betraying this secret or destroying myself in the process. I realize that there is nothing I can do now to take back the horror and revulsion you must feel. You hide it well, you know, and I thank you for that. Just know that I tried, Vryce. And apparently, I am only human in this respect, and like all humans, I am fallible." For a second Tarrant was quiet, then he added, almost inaudibly, "My greatest failure…my greatest hope." His eyes closed as silent tears ran down his face.

Damien pulled the other man up closer along the steep rise in the cave floor, to where they would be able to see eye to eye, shoulders barely touching. Damien had to hold Tarrant at this angle himself because the adept was still too weak and emotionally spent to do much of anything. Tarrant's eyes were still closed, tears slowly falling down his cheeks. "Gerald, open your eyes. Look at me ," Damien commanded softly. Startled out of his self-pity by the use of his given name, Gerald obeyed. Twin pools of liquid silver looked across the dimly lit cavern air at Damien, so full of sorrow and longing it broke his heart knowing that he was the cause.

Taking a deep breath, Damien looked down at the ground and said, "I don't know what I've ever done to make you think that I'd abandon you now, but you forget it. Right. Now. I haven't had a lot of time to think about this, and you know I'm not a very verbally expressive type person, so here goes." Damien looked back up into those beautiful eyes still leaking tears, "I'm here for you. Now. Tomorrow. Always. There is no doubt in my mind that you have suffered terrible things, but don't judge me by the actions you've experienced in your past. That's over and done with. Judge me for _my_ actions alone. And what conclusions do you come to? Exactly." At that, Damien leaned toward Gerald and stopped just in front of his face, their lips a hairsbreadth apart, "Here's my answer, Gerald. Judge me by my actions."

Damien crossed the last millimeters of space between them, wrapped his arms around the adept, and pressed his lips to Gerald's in a kiss so fierce Gerald felt the heat of it spread from their point of contact to the rest of his body as if lightning had struck him down from the heavens. He managed to get one arm around the former priest's shoulder and pull him further into the kiss. Though it lasted only a minute perhaps, it was the penultimate moment of Tarrant's life. His love was returned! He wasn't rejected! He pulled Damien in for a lighter, softer kiss, and then laid his head upon the broad chest, eyes still widened in their shock. "I never dreamt it possible," he whispered, to no one in particular. "Yeah, well, me neither," Damien chuckled while stroking the adept's hair. He finished by saying, "But we're here, together. And I have no plans of going anywhere without you." Into the darkness, Gerald Tarrant whispered his reply, "Just so, priest; just so."

End note: Thanks for bearing with me through this story. It is the first I have ever composed, so it is bound to be rocky and awkward in places. Much thanks to blackdragonsghost for giving it a once over prior to my posting and not shattering what little confidence I had in its creation. I wanted to delve deep into what created the baseline evil in Tarrant's character and also what gave him a couple of his peculiarities, such as exactly _how_ he hunts his victims and why he is always so fastidiously clean. What could cause a leader in the church to stray so very far from the original path? His character is complex, and since the author only hints at the atrocities committed against him, it left me with a wide range possibilities to explore, much to the chagrin of readers I'm sure. So many others have contributed their own versions of stories with these characters, and I have enjoyed reading them immensely. This is to be my small way to try to repay them for their dedication and for providing much literary entertainment for myself.


End file.
